We spent a wonderful, relaxing weekend camping at the Oregon Coast. “Camping” is a relative term – we have a travel trailer so we camp in great comfort. The trailer is especially important in Oregon, where it rains. A lot. Over the years of living here we’ve progressed from tent to tent trailer to travel trailer, and have extended the time of year we are able to all seasons.

This weekend we had a rainy Friday night and Sunday morning, but a gorgeous day on Saturday. It was an enjoyable day of walking on the beach and then visiting Florence, a cute little town on the coast. I captured the remaining piers of Florence’s former ferry landing, inspired by this week’s Picture Inspiration prompt, “long and tall.”

But that’s the not the big news – I’m coming to Chicago this week! It’s a last minute work trip, planned Friday afternoon. There was a need for someone with my background to go and recruit at a conference, and I’ve never been to Chicago. After several months back from Italy with no travel plans in sight, I’m ready to visit someplace new and jumped on the chance.

If you are in the Chicago area and would like to meet up in downtown Chicago for a coffee and a photowalk this week, contact me via email: kat [at] kateyestudio [dot] com. I’ll be in town Wednesday through Saturday and will be squeezing in sightseeing with my camera as much as possible. I hope to meet a few of you there!

I’m taking the year-long Picture Inspiration online course through Big Picture Classes. There is a weekly prompt, and here are my last couple of images for the prompts. Above you see “rhythm,” found in a men’s clothing store in Taormina, and below is “motif,” created from a journal and collection of Florentine papers.

I knew it would be challenging to make the journal the focal point with all of the patterns in this image, so here is what I did to get the final look (all editing in Photoshop Elements 8):

Captured the image using a 50mm lens set at f/1.4 to get the papers in the background blurred relative to the journal on top. A wide open aperture was necessary in order to blur the background papers, since the journal was not that thick.

Cropped into a square format, since that is on my mind as this week’s Exploring with a Camera. I took the image with square format in mind, and arranged the papers in the background to show the motif I wanted.

Adjusted levels to get more contrast, and slightly sharpened the image to make the journal pop a little more.

Created a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer that was masked to effect the background papers only, and set Saturation to -30 to desaturate the color. The background papers were already blurred by the aperture I chose in the original shot, but by desaturating the colors a little bit more I made the journal more obvious.

I just love these Florentine papers! I never use them, but I always want to buy them. I solved my craving last time by buying some – to give away! This week I’m going to give away this set of 10 cards/envelopes. Comment on this post by midnight EST Thursday to enter. Aren’t they pretty?? I can’t wait to send them, maybe to YOU!